Ask HN: Legalspeak - what does Amazon mean with this statement? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Legalspeak - what does Amazon mean with this statement?

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Amazon updates its "Product Advertising API License Agreement", the new version being effective 21st November 2012.

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/agreement-changes.html?ref_=pe_173690_26827400

Refreshing the content of this agreement, I noticed the following passage:

"You further acknowledge and agree that our rights in the Product Advertising API, Data Feed, and Product Advertising Content are of a special, unique, extraordinary character, giving them peculiar value, the loss of which cannot be readily estimated or adequately compensated for in monetary damages."

What is Amazon's intent of putting this passage into the agreement? If monetary compensation isn't adequate, what then?

The intent is to make it easier to get a court order to have you stop doing what they don't like.

This is a very common statement. It's talking about their rights over the product, not the product itself.

Plain english: "If you break our rights (patents, copy our work, etc) the amount of money we will loose cannot be predicted and probably will be a lot. We can only calculate how much you own us after the damage is actually done. Also, we will need time to do this because this is our very unique zebra-unicorn."

Probably to encourage a court to look to equitable remedies if there is a breach of the agreement. Remedies such as injunctions.

I second this one. I bet its a way to avoid the situation where people break the rules but the court only gives Amazon a bit of money. Amazon doesn't want that, they want you to stop breaking the rules. So if you agree ahead of time that money alone won't cut it when you mess up, Amazon can move right on to remedies that don't involve money, like shutting you off from the API or getting an injunction.

Maybe they just want that acknowledgement of yours...? Maybe the feel-good value of this acknowledgement IS the adequate compensation for those special, unique and extraordinary rights...??

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